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Home routers 'vaccinated' by benign virus
BBC News reports [bbc.com] that a benign wifi virus is infecting vulnerable home routers and patching the router software so as harden them against malware attacks.
And so far, researchers at Semantic can't find that the the virus does anything malicious. In fact, Semantic wonders: Is there an Internet-of-Things vigilante out there? [symantec.com]
Wifatch was first discovered in late 2014 and since then has been steadily scouring the web for routers and other smart devices running vulnerable software.
In a blogpost (linked above), Symantec said that once Wifatch finds and infects a vulnerable router it connects to other compromised devices to download software updates that make them harder to attack successfully.
In addition, it said, Wifatch tries to disinfect devices that have been compromised by malicious software. It regularly reboots devices to kill off malware running on them and return them to a clean state.
Still there are worries, because there are cryptographically protected back doors in Wifatch that allows only the authors to re-connect. Semantic isn't even sure what to recommend as far as removal or mitigation.
Initial infection is suspected to come via the management telnet port being open to the internet. Hopefully no Soylentils would be guilty of that!
But we gotta ask, does anyone believe there is such a thing as a White-Hat virus? Or do those back doors speak louder than actions>
